This image began its life as a plain snapshot I took of myself while at a recent Fashion Expo 2008 auction. As I have been so fond of doing lately I separated the picture into its foreground and background parts and applied gaussian blur to simulate a photographic depth-of-field effect. I even treated my own hand to a dose of motion blur to make it seem as though I am brushing my hair aside:) however I have to say that the image turned out fine but also seemed rather bland and in fact boring! I knew I had to do something else with it:)
What happened next was both an accident and a moment of revelation...I ended up experimenting with the neon glow effect in GIMP which caused the image to turn mostly black...but when I turned it into a negative it suddenly resembled a real life line artwork drawn by hand! Finally I layered this new image over the original and blended it in so that the final result exhibits some hints of shades and colours, as well as an interesting mix of bold strokes and intricately drawn details.
I am very proud of this image although I will admit that I might not be able to reproduce the exact same steps ever again *giggles:)